I drove up to Sacramento today with my teammate Noe to watch the prologue. We got rained on a few times driving up, but when we got there, no rain and patches of blue sky. Windy and cold though. We walked around to get the lay of the land and found where some of the team buses were, so we walked around and took pictures of bike. We got over to the Columbia/High Road bus and Bob Stapleton was outside of it talking to people, signing autographs and answering questions. Pretty much making himself totally available to the public. We talked to him about their bikes and checked out Cavendish and Hincapie's TT machines and he said to come back at 12:30 when the riders would be there. As Noe said, how many sports will you find the owner of a team on the street talking to the fans. More walking around and taking pictures of bikes. We stopped at the Saxo Bank bus to ask if my friend Inaki had made the trip (he's one of their mechanics and was at last year's ToC), but no, he was in Spain. Over to the expo and we walked around there and checked out more bikes. A stop at the Look tent, a stop at the Felt tent (no SuperDave), chatted with Ian from Specialized, then we walked over to get camera batteries and coffee. More walking around and we found the Cervelo Test Team and talked to Phil White. Next to them was Rock Racing. By this time riders were there and we saw Victor Hugo Pena and Oscar Sevilla at RR.
Oh, there's LiquiGas! What, Basso will be back shortly? Well, we'll just wait. Basso came back and we got pictures of him. Jimmy Riccotello is in town for a couple of stages, so we met up with him and then walked over on the course to watch some of the prologue. Lots of people there, but they had a really nice course where you could stand in the middle of Capitol Mall and see them going down one side and then coming back up the other. The only places that were super crowded and hard to see anything was right at the start house and right at the finish and on the turn around.
We decided that we'd head back over to Saxo Bank (aka SexyBank) to check out Fabian Cancellara, so we ended up having front row spots right outside their bus and had a chance to talk to Bobby Julich. It was pretty interesting and very enlightening to watch them go through a full warm up. All of the SB riders warmed up on their road bikes, except for Fabian and he was on his second TT rig. Bobby said they each do about an hour warm up with specific wattage intervals, then 15 minutes before their start time, they get off, go get into their skin suit, then back on the bike to keep the legs loose. We were right in front of JJ Haedo and he was dripping sweat by the end of the warm up. Every rider had ear phones in their ears and blocked out the crowd. On their cool down rides, they were more than happy to chat with the fans, pose for pictures and sign autographs. Especially Jens Voigt and Gustav Larsson. Larsson was explaining watts and the SRM to a lady and her young son. Voigt was talking to everyone.
Oh yeah, this year's Hollywood cycling fan is actor Patrick Dempsey from that medical show (forget what it's called as I've never seen it). He stopped by the Saxo Bank bus.
Cancellara did his warm up and someone in the crowd said, "What's that burning rubber smell?" Bobby Julich laughed and said, "That's the smell of Cancellara power!" He was doing one-legged drills in his biggest gearing! Totally cool to watch. And his gold Oakleys were total fly. The other interesting thing was to notice how skinny the climber types are, like Andy Schleck. He was standing next to Stuey O'Grady and Stuey isn't big, compared to the normal population, but Andy S. is a beanpole, and really thin. Stuey was a lot thicker through the torso.
Once it was getting close to the time for the top riders to ride, we walked over near the Astana bus and tent and it was a zoo! When Lance left to go to the start house, the crowd literally ran over to the start, so we had a front row view of Levi warming up, talking to my ex-favorite rider (and still #2 on my all-time list), Ekimov. We then walked over to the course and saw a bunch of riders go by and then it was over to just past the finish line. We saw the last 10 or so riders come through and a guy with UCI CHAPERONE in 12-inch letters on his coat was standing in the middle of the blocked off street, just waiting for Lance. When Lance came through, it was off to drug testing. Like they couldn't have made it more obvious as there weren't any other dudes in the UCI CHAPERONE coats standing in the middle of the course.
Once the race was over it was time for burritos and a coffee, then back to find Jimmy R. and make plans for tomorrow, then to the truck and a quick drive home. Super fun day. Thanks to Noe for going up with me. It was a total blast to talk cycling all day.
All pictures from the day are here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=221908&id=595830044&l=f8b66
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